Hi.
I've been working for weeks to get my video project onto DVD looking as good as possible and working correctly. My last attempt was converted in TMPGEnc at 8000 CBR and with "MPEG 1 Layer II Audio (MP2)" selected for a lower audio bitrate. I had previously done it with PCM audio and when the DVD player started the main movie, it froze.
Well, now when I play it, everything almost works fine.
The audio is there, but only through the analog outputs of my player.
The video plays fine except where there is white text on a black background (or a fade to black and back up, or a white background with black text). At that point it runs slow and jerky. It stutters through those parts (including stuttering audio), then when it's back to full video, it runs smoothly again.
It seems to play fine in the computer.
Any ideas why my player (JVC XV-SA70) can't handle those certain areas?
The first one I did was encoded in Movie Factory 2 at "best" setting (8000 CBR, I think). It played fine in the player, but looked bad. The second one was encoded in TMPGEnc as mentioned above and authored in Movie Factory. It froze the player. This third one was done basically the same way, but with the alternate audio format.
I would appreciate any advice you might have.

Where else did you expect it to be? Does your player have MPEG Audio digital out? Most amplifiers don't have digital MPEG input, so the players convert it to PCM. You should be able to disable this and force the player to use the digital output, though. Look in the player's setup menu. Some players can also convert MPEG to PCM digital out, but not all.

rghogue wrote:

It stutters through those parts (including stuttering audio), then when it's back to full video, it runs smoothly again. It seems to play fine in the computer. Any ideas why my player (JVC XV-SA70) can't handle those certain areas?

It can be caused by several things: bitrate, media or file structure. I would suggest trying the following things:

1. Try a different authoring program (ex., TMPGEnc Authroing Tool, ReelDVD, SpruceUp, etc.). Most programs have trial versions that you can download and use for a couple of weeks or a limited number of projects.

2. Try a different brand of discs. According to most tests, Maxell and Pioneer discs have the best compatibility. Also, if you're using DVD-RW or DVD+RW, try DVD+R or (preferably) DVD-R.

3. Try encoding a few clips (the problematic parts) using a lower bitrate (ex., 6000).

And, of course, try playing your existing discs on a different player. If they have the same problem everywhere, that probably inicates there's really something wrong with the disc. If they play on most players, it's probably just a compatibility issue.

Sinc you say the audio also stutters, I'm assuming it's not an interlacing issue. A common problem, however, is to have the wrong field order selected in your editing program. This means that the effects rendered by the program (ex., scrolling text) will use the opposite field order of the video itself (the video field order is determined by the capture hardware). So when you play the video back on a TV, either the text will flicker or the video will flicker. On the PC screen everything will look fine because the fields are blended. But, of course, this would not affect the audio.

Thanks.
Okay...I just tested the DVD at a friend's house. His DVD player didn't have a problem with any of the disc. It played smoothly through the parts mine stuttered through.
But his Playstation 2 had problems with those parts. It stuttered a little through segments of white text on a black background, and each time it reached a part that faded up from black, it froze briefly during the fade up, then continued playing.
Any ideas?

Playstations have problems with lots of discs (even some industrial DVDs). So this is definitely looking like a media compatibility issue. Try a different brand of discs (I'd suggest Pioneer or Maxell).

Well, I just burned my project to a Pioneer brand DVD-R. I still have playback problems on my JVC XV-SA70 player. It works alright on my friend's Magnavox DVD609 player.
One other problem I have with it is there is no audio on the "first play" clip. I'm authoring in Ulead Movie Factory 2 (it seems most people on this forum use Ulead). When I test it in Movie Factory before burning it, it plays the audio, but it's not on the burned disc. The rest of the audio is there for the menus and the other movie files, but not the "first play" file.
It's worked before, but I think that was when it was when the audio was included with the file by encoding as a system file. When added afterwards, it doesn't make it to the finished disc.
As for bitrate, this one was at 8000 CBR with PCM audio. It froze my player and ran okay on the other player.
A previous one was done with VBR. My player got more jerky during scenes with more movement and busy images and less jerky during slower simpler scenes.
I thought my player was supposed to be a higher end player with it's digital audio out, DVD-audio capabilities, and all that, but it can't handle a high bitrate? How does it play rented movies?
How can I know other people's players will handle the DVDs I create for them?
This is frustrating. I just want to take my projects, which I shoot on miniDV and edit in Premiere, and make them available on DVD with good quality images and sound. How do you guys make DVD's that work?

Oh, also...
All these DVD's I've burned were authored and burned using Movie Factory 2. The first one I did was also encoded with Movie Factory at it's "best" setting (8000). It ran okay in my DVD player, but just looked bad...very blocky and noisy in parts...but it's not jerky, and all the audio is there.
I encoded with TMPGEnc (also at 8000 and basically following your directions on how to set it up for DVD compliant video) and it looks better, but doesn't run smoothly.

The problem could be that your player can't read recordable DVDs very well. As a result, when it needs to read the disc faster (because the bitrate goes up), it gets read errors and needs to wait for the disc to spin again to retry. If the drive is slow, the time it takes to spin the disc can be longer than the time it takes to flush the buffer. This could explain why it reads the slow (lower bitrate) parts better than the faster (higher bitrate) ones.

According to the comments here, that JVC model has some problems with DVD-R discs, and doesn't play RW discs at all. Apparently the problem is the drive itself. The player's electronics are fine, but the drive is slow and unreliable.